#DiningOutStrong Presents: Found Kitchen and Social House Evanston

NOTE: You may be reading this from a location other than Evanston, IL. I’d urge you to continue reading if you like dining out. Even though I’m talking about a local restaurant, the tactics outlined here are applicable anywhere you choose to eat yummy food!

I could sit around and tell you that Found Kitchen and Social House's menu is filled with healthy, low-calorie options but that would be the biggest lie ever. It’s not. And that's not why people come here anyway. Found is one of the top restaurants in Evanston and the North Shore and was written up in the New York Times, for crying out loud. You don't get there by staying away from butter. The food is incredibly delicious because of their use of the best, richest, yummiest (and local!!) ingredients. So instead of saying, “You should order this and you can order that but maybe stay away from xyz,” I am going to say: Order anything from the menu. Seriously. Anything. Even if you are currently losing weight. “Izzy, how the F could I do that and still lose weight?!” you scream? So glad you asked. 

Here is how you can have a delightful experience at Found without feeling deprived:

1. If you like having some wine at dinner, please note their pours are 5oz. Why is this important? Because 5oz is one serving of wine. Restaurants often give you goblets full of wine that are closer to two servings. So when you decide to stick to one glass at Found you’ll actually be getting one glass. 
2. I wrote this in my 10 Mile House review: There is power in sharing dishes, especially when you want to try a bunch of different plates. Plus, Found food is meant to be shared! Sharing gives you the chance to try out multiple dishes so you can have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and keep your portions under control while keeping the FOMO monster away.
3. Ask the server to pace out your plates so that you don’t get everything at once. We ordered everything we wanted all together and the server helped break the order up into three parts (had we been in a hurry, we could have broken it up into two parts).
   
   Breaking things up will serve to help you pace yourself so you can eat a little bit more slowly than you might if everything came at once. It will give you the opportunity to check in with yourself and ask, "Am I still hungry? How hungry?" 
   
   We started with the heirloom baby lettuce salad with blue cheese, pine nuts, and a fabulous fennel-herb vinaigrette. There wasn’t a TON of cheese or vinaigrette, it was all very light. You may have heard that starting with a salad can help fill you up so you’re less prone to eating a ton later. That might be true for some but not for me. I didn’t even want to order the salad but our server said it was really good. It WAS, surprisingly so for a simple salad. But what a great way to make sure you’re getting in a good serving+ of veggies off the bat!
   
   After the salad, we had two small dishes come — lamb meatballs served with a pistachio chimichurri and mint yogurt and a sweet potato hummus & quark flatbread topped with shaved root vegetables. Then the last two dishes came — the oven roasted pork chop served with braised beans, smoked chilies and a serrano crema and miso roasted carrots with chutney powder and cilantro. By the time the last of the food arrived, we were feeling pretty happy with what we’d eaten. We had a few bites, taking our time, making sure we were hitting the point of “I feel so great and content right now,” while staying away from, “Oh, hell, I feel really full and uncomfortable.” This meant the rest of the food was packed up to go home!
4. While you work on eating slowly, you can also play around with keeping your portions under control. It’s easy to lose track of how much you’re eating when things are coming out one after the other so feel free to try out the following: 
   1. Ask for a smaller plate for yourself so you can’t pile a mound of food on your plate. 
   2. Do not eat off of the main plate. It will be difficult to keep track of how much you're eating.
   3. Luckily, every dish we ordered came in pieces (from the individual whole carrots to the individual meatballs - duh - to the sliced flatbread and sliced pork chop). Add one piece from each dish on your plate at a time. For example, put one meatball and one slice of flatbread on your plate. Eat those items in pieces (even if you can technically stuff the whole meatball in your mouth, don’t; eat it in at least two bites). This will kill two birds: It will take you longer to eat and will keep your portions in check.

Yes, we ordered way too much food. Next time, I'll probably order two  less dishes if there are only two of us eating (unless we want food to come home with us -- at topic for another discussion). But I'm really happy about the tactics we used because we left the restaurant content. We didn't feel the  need for dessert because we'd taken the time to really enjoy the food we ate. 

I can't recommend Found enough but regardless of where you go, go armed with a handful of tactics you can use so you can thoroughly enjoy yourself and leave happy knowing you stuck to your plan with your ultimate goals in mind.